Investment house Gensec has begun the rollout of its new technology infrastructure that will support the company`s acquisitions, global growth and increasing business.
Gensec`s group information technology officer, Sabir Munshi, says the company`s rapid growth over the past two years will be supported with a technology policy that is designed to take the company well into the next millennium.
Munshi attributes Gensec` success to a number of factors: organic growth of the business in the past 18 months, the acquisition of Sanlam Asset Management and NSA Private Equity Bank, new business initiatives such as Gensec Bank, and the opening of Gensec`s London and Dublin offices.
"At the end of 1998 we made several strategic decisions with regard to our technology infrastructure, and formulated policy pertaining to our applications, hardware and suppliers. In all cases we determined that the environment must be flexible to allow for the rapid rollout of new products, solutions and structure, and cater for new innovations in the business."
Gensec chose Sun as its solutions platform, and Computer Configurations Holdings` financial services business as its preferred supplier of Sun equipment. "We chose CCH as our solutions partner because they understand our industry, and keep us abreast of technology trends in the financial space and the related implications for our own business," says Munshi.
Gensec has also instituted a disaster recovery programme, which will be managed by Business Recovery Services, CCH`s disaster recovery company.
"It became apparent very early in our relationship with financial houses that their needs went well beyond technology," says CCH group sales director, Anne Tissiman. "Financial institutions are the first businesses in South Africa to be affected by global business trends. They therefore understand the urgency of bringing products to market ahead of competition.
"The group as a whole can respond quickly to different technology needs within a company. In the case of Gensec, we provided not only the server platform, but also business continuity and disaster recovery. The depth of knowledge we have gained from the Gensec relationship puts CCH in a strong position to provide further expertise when new business opportunities arise."
Gensec took a best of breed approach to its applications strategy. Infinity was chosen as an interest rate derivative solution, RiskCare for equity derivatives, Sagent as the data warehousing solution, and RetrievalWare from Grintek for Gensec`s electronic library.
Several Novell-based legacy systems needed to be integrated, including HiPortfolio, a portfolio management system from DST International, a treasury management system from local company STT, and FinanceKit, a trading system for banking from Swedish company TREMA.
"The risk associated with such an approach is the lack of interoperability," Munshi comments. "However, this seemingly large hurdle was overcome easily by integrating the systems using middleware supplied by Reuters subsidiary Tibco."
The Siebel customer management system will reside across the applications. Munshi says that the technology strategy has been formulated to facilitate smoother implementation at new offices, both locally and abroad.
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